2nd Sept 2004UK e-Science all hands meeting1 Designing User Interfaces to Minimise Common Errors in Ontology Development Alan Rector, Nick Drummond, Matthew Horridge, Jeremy Rogers, Holger Knublauch, Robert Stevens, Hai Wang, Chris Wroe Funded by The CO-ODE and HyOntUse projects

2nd Sept 2004UK e-Science all hands meeting2 Who Are We Working With?

2nd Sept 2004UK e-Science all hands meeting3 What’s This Talk About? Problems in building ontologies in OWL Tools to begin addressing the problems

2nd Sept 2004UK e-Science all hands meeting4 What’s The Problem? is difficult Building Ontologies

2nd Sept 2004UK e-Science all hands meeting5 Why? Not everyone can afford to employ an ontologist XML/RDF/OWL is not much fun to write by hand DL languages like OWL often don’t behave as expected

2nd Sept 2004UK e-Science all hands meeting6 Behave as Expected? OWL does not make the Unique Name Assumption DLs use Open World Reasoning Domain and Range as axioms Only logicians like symbols like  and  Primitive vs Defined classes

2nd Sept 2004UK e-Science all hands meeting7 What’s The Problem? is difficult without help! Building Ontologies in OWL VERY

2nd Sept 2004UK e-Science all hands meeting8 WE WANT TO HELP

2nd Sept 2004UK e-Science all hands meeting9 Tutorials and courses run with OWL and DAML+OIL Existing tools developed by Manchester and Stanford (OilEd & Protégé) Lots of ontology building experience High level of involvement in language standards being created In house DL expertise Why Should We ( of all people ) Help?

2nd Sept 2004UK e-Science all hands meeting10 How Can We Help? 1)Provide easy access to common tasks 2)Make correct actions the default 3)Simplify complex tasks 4)Improve presentation 5)Make it easy to catch mistakes By making tools which: Encourage Good Modelling

2nd Sept 2004UK e-Science all hands meeting11 + = What Are We Doing?

2nd Sept 2004UK e-Science all hands meeting12 1. Access to Common Tasks: Disjointness Problem: Explicit assertion of disjointness required Aim: Make whole primitive tree disjoint Common task: Make all siblings disjoint Solutions: –Make all subclasses disjoint action –Make all siblings disjoint button –Create group of classes wizard

2nd Sept 2004UK e-Science all hands meeting13 1. Access to Common Tasks: Disjointness

2nd Sept 2004UK e-Science all hands meeting14 2. Default Actions: Universal Restrictions Problem: Universal restrictions used incorrectly Common task: Create a set of existential restrictions and then close Solutions: –Create existential restriction by default –Closure action abstracts away universal restr. –Warn when universal restr. used inappropriately

2nd Sept 2004UK e-Science all hands meeting15 2. Default Actions: Universal Restrictions

2nd Sept 2004UK e-Science all hands meeting16 3. Complex tasks: Creating Patterns Problem: Modelling practice not established so its easy to omit steps in creating patterns Aim: Create patterns in a consistent manner Solutions: –Supporting work by W3C Semantic Web Best Practice Working Party –Wizards (eg Value Partitions) –Covering Axioms action

2nd Sept 2004UK e-Science all hands meeting17 3. Complex tasks: Creating Patterns

2nd Sept 2004UK e-Science all hands meeting18 4. Improve Visualisation: Defined Classes Problem: Class definition and effects of classification are hard to visualise Aim: Create defined classes and allow polyheirarchies to be computed automatically Solutions: –Clear distinctions between restrictions defining a class and those simply describing it –Improved visualisation to navigate the model before and after classification

2nd Sept 2004UK e-Science all hands meeting19 4. Improve Visualisation: Defined Classes

2nd Sept 2004UK e-Science all hands meeting20 4. Improve Visualisation: Defined Classes

2nd Sept 2004UK e-Science all hands meeting21 5. Catching Mistakes: Timebombs Problem: Finding the reasons for inconsistencies or misclassification is hard Aim: Check that model fits in with intent of modeller Solutions: –Tests framework –Warnings during editing of possible bad practice –Debugging view

2nd Sept 2004UK e-Science all hands meeting22 5. Catching Mistakes: Timebombs

2nd Sept 2004UK e-Science all hands meeting23 Is That All? Improved Reasoner support Support for larger ontologies Hiding away workarounds for language limitations Cut-down editing environment More wizards (pattern support)

2nd Sept 2004UK e-Science all hands meeting24 What If You Still Can’t Use It? Get the Protégé OWL tutorial

2nd Sept 2004UK e-Science all hands meeting25 What Was All That? We are contributing to the successful Protégé OWL plugin We are developing further tools The aim of the tools is to make ontology development easier We have also developed tutorials and other community support

2nd Sept 2004UK e-Science all hands meeting26 How Do You Contribute? Ontologies: Applications, Requirements and Tools BoF, 4:20pm Room 2 CO-ODE forum ( Protégé OWL mailing list (

2nd Sept 2004UK e-Science all hands meeting27 One Final Question…

2nd Sept 2004UK e-Science all hands meeting28 …Any Questions?